Super GRUB2 Disk is a live cd that helps you to boot into most any Operating System (OS) even if you cannot boot into it by normal means.

A new stable release

The former Super Grub2 Disk stable release was 2.00s2 version and released on May 2014 (one year ago). This release does not have as many new features as the previous stable version but some of them are quite interesting:

New option: ‘Disks and Partitions (Chainload)’ adapted from Smx work.

Super Grub2 Disk 2.02s3 – Chainload Disks and Partitions

New option: “Enable all native disk drivers” so that you can try to load: SATA, PATA and USB hard disks (and their partitions) as native disk drives. This is experimental.

Most options had their search code improved. Super Grub2 Disk should be faster.

Super Grub2 Disk builds its own grub based on upstream grub instead of Debian grub.

Mac OS X kernel detection was improved to avoid false detections.

Thanks to upstream grub improvement now Super Grub2 Disk supports booting in EFI mode when booted from a USB device / hard disk. Actually SG2D was announced previously to boot from EFI from a USB device while it only booted from a cdrom.

Many options titles were rewritten so that they are better understood.

Let me repeat it slowly. With Super Grub2 Disk hybrid iso you will be able to boot from:

EFI mode. Cdrom or DVD media.

EFI mode. USB or hard disk media.

BIOS mode. Cdrom or DVD media.

BIOS mode. USB or hard disk media.

We are going to see which are the complete Super Grub2 Disk features with a demo video, where you can download it, the thank you – hall of fame and some thoughts about the Super Grub2 Disk development.

Please do not forget to read our howtos so that you can have step by step guides (how to make a cdrom or an usb, how to boot from it, etc) on how to use Super Grub2 Disk and, if needed, Rescatux.

Super Grub2 Disk 2.02s3 main menu

Tour

Here there is a little video tour in order to discover most of Super Grub2 Disk options. The rest of the options you will have to discover them by yourself.

Features

Most of the features here will let you boot into your Operating Systems. The rest of the options will improve the Super Grub2 Disk operating systems autodetecting (enable RAID, LVM, etc.) or will deal with minor aspects of the user interface (Colours, language, etc.).

Enable all native disk drivers *experimental* to detect most Operating Systems also in special devices or filesystems

Boot manually

Operating Systems

grub.cfg – Extract entries

Super Grub2 Disk 2.01 beta 3 grub.cfg Extract entries option

grub.cfg – (GRUB2 configuration files)

menu.lst – (GRUB legacy configuration files)

core.img – (GRUB2 installation (even if mbr is overwritten))

Disks and Partitions (Chainload)

Bootable ISOs (in /boot-isos or /boot/boot-isos

Extra GRUB2 functionality

Enable GRUB2’s LVM support

Enable GRUB2’s RAID support

Enable GRUB2’s PATA support (to work around BIOS bugs/limitation)

Mount encrypted volumes (LUKS and geli)

Enable serial terminal

Extra Search functionality

Search in floppy ON/OFF

Search in CDROM ON/OFF

List Devices / Partitions

Color ON /OFF

Exit

Halt the computer

Reboot the computer

Supported Operating Systems

Excluding too custom kernels from university students Super Grub2 Disk can autodetect and boot most every Operating System. Some examples are written here so that Google bots can see it and also to make more confident the final user who searchs his own special (according to him) Operating System.

Support for different hardware platforms

Before this release we only had the hybrid version aimed at regular pcs. Now with the upcoming new EFI based machines you have the EFI standalone versions among others. What we don’t support is booting when secure boot is enabled.

CD & USB in one downloads:

About other downloads. As this is the first time I develop Super Grub2 Disk out of source code (well, probably not the first time, but the first time in ages) I have not been able to build these other downloads: coreboot, i386-efi, i386-pc, ieee1275, x86_64-efi, standalone coreboot, standalone i386-efi, standalone ieee1275. Help is welcome on this subject.

2.02s2 beta 1 changelog:

Improvement on upstream grub (d29259b134257458a98c1ddc05d2a36c677ded37 – test: do not stop after first file test or closing bracket) will probably make Super Grub2 Disk run faster.

Added new grub build scripts so that Super Grub2 Disk uses its own built versions of grub and not the default system / distro / chroot one.

Ensure that Mac OS X entries are detected ok thanks to Users dir. This is because Grub2 needs to emulate Mac OS X kernel so that it’s detected as a proper boot device on Apple computers.

Thanks to upstream grub improvement now Super Grub2 Disk supports booting in EFI mode when booted from a USB device / hard disk. Actually SG2D was announced previously to boot from EFI from a USB device while it only booted from a cdrom.

2.02s1 beta 1 changelog:

Added new option: “Enable all native disk drivers” so that you can try to load: SATA, PATA and USB hard disks (and their partitions) as native disk drives. This is experimental.

Removed no longer needed options: “Enable USB” and “Enable PATA”.

“Search floppy” and “Search cdrom” options were moved into “Extra GRUB2 functionality menu”. At the same time “Extra Search functionality” menu was removed.

If you want to translate into your language please check TRANSLATION file at source code to learn how to translate into your language.

Thank you – Hall of fame

I want to thank in alphabetical order:

bfree (Niall Wash): For his work in rethinking how Super Grub2 Disk grub script might be rewritten although we never used that code. For adding code for EFI chainloader, helping on building and testing Super Grub2 Disk EFI releases.

Jordan_U (Jordan Uggla) (jordan.uggla AT gmail DOT com): For his work in rewriting Lua Super Grub2 Disk into new Grub2 scripting. Also for his work in translation system based on gettext and po. And also I want to thank him for all this work in Super Grub2 Disk in many many ways.

nox (Juergen Lock) (nox AT freebsd DOT org): For his work in fixing *BSD boot entries and helping adding new *BSD boot entries and testing.

Smx (Stefano): For his Mac OS X / Darwin boot fixes and testing. He has also worked in redesigning some of the menues and probably his work will be included in next Super Grub2 Disk versions. He has also worked in a keyboard selection menu on his own too. That will be also included in next versions.

The person who writes this article is adrian15 and is proud of being responsible among other things for the rewriting of options as if they were libraries. And also for the User Interface (UI) complete redesign.

And I cannot forget about thanking bTactic, the enterprise where I work at and that hosts our site.

Some thoughts about Super Grub2 Disk development

Super Grub2 Disk development to be stalled

There has not been too much feedback for Super Grub2 Disk betas. Hopefully this new stable release come back with new bugs (Yes, it’s sad to say so). As I want to focus on new Rescatux stable if no one wants to help on Super Grub2 Disk development there won’t be any new release (stable or beta) in a long time.

Rescatux development

I want to focus on Rescatux development on the next months so that we have an stable release on July 2015. I will probably base it on newest Debian Jessie.

I have choosen a random day from 2015 to generate some stats of Super Grub2 Disk usage (and their users). I could use some better stats from a longer period of time but being exact is not the purpose of this post.

Countries

Operating Systems

Some people still use the quite old Windows 7 (4). Other people use Gentoo (11).

Summary

As you can see Super Grub2 Disk is being used daily on many parts of the globe on such distant places as Japan, USA or Iran. You can learn that Windows 10 has not been released yet because people still use Windows 7. Hopefully many of the Super Grub2 Disk are young and will never need to ask for help.

See you next year!

Approximatively in a year I will redo the stats again so that we can compare with this year’s stats.